Letters From the Sky
by simplyprologue
Summary: "Actually, I've tried to get in touch with you a lot of times in the past three years. Did you get any of those emails?" "I didn't read them." In the uncertain hours following Mac's stabbing in Islamabad, Will reads the emails. Each and every one. (Pre-series AU.)
1. These Are Only Walls

**A/N: **I don't... know where this plot bunny came from, but it demanded to be written. I had hoped to have all of it written before I left to move back to school (which happens in T-minus six hours at this point) but real life intervened, so I'm posting it in halves. If move-in goes smoothly, I should have Part II finished in the next few days, along with Chapter Two of _Paterfamilias_. The title from this song is taken from the Civil Twilight song of the same name, which inspired this fic so you should all listen to it.

Thanks as always to Meg and Pippa for being my Red Team.

* * *

**PART ONE: THESE ARE ONLY WALLS**

* * *

On day three Jim finally brings her laptop along with him to the hospital. _The doctors said you need to rest_, he told her on days one and two despite her protests, as if being stuck in Landstuhl and thousands of miles away from the story wasn't upsetting enough.

The real pain—she thinks, or would think if she could get her thoughts to settle—is the slow burn of morphine through her veins, the conflagration catching the hard and careful layers she's cultivated these past few years. On day three she suspects that all of her is catching fire, her body lying still like kindling on her hospital bed. She needs to work, to distract herself before she thinks on anything too hard for too long.

There has to be something she can do, even from here, even though the whistleblower piece has to be trashed.

Another thing. Another failed thing, but at least she only hurt herself this time she thinks, ignoring the three strata of wrinkles in Jim's forehead, how nervously he sits in the chair next to the monitors clipped and taped to her.

But MacKenzie barely remembers the stabbing at all.

Opening her computer on the rolling table that she's gingerly maneuvered to rest over her lap, she swallows down against her pounding heart. Her laptop whirs to life after the longest rest she's given it in months, and she only has to re-type her password twice before her clumsy, medicated fingers get the keys right.

Immediately, she's barraged by a deluge of emails. Well-wishers, colleagues, higher ups at CNN, and the flat-out nosy. But only one causes a spike in her heart rate on the monitor.

Ignoring the flare of pain in her middle, she clicks on it.

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
6:51 AM on Oct. 18 2009**

_Mac—_

_I just wanted to say that I heard what happened, and I hope you're recovering well._

_—__Will_

She's desperately underwhelmed and shakingly overwhelmed at all once. The time stamp is only from a few hours ago, the middle of the night in New York City she thinks, refusing to count backwards on her fingers to make sure. He must have debated for days to send this. Or not, she thinks again, more cautiously. He probably just doesn't care; he hasn't replied to any of her emails or voicemails, after all.

Swallowing hard again, she opens a reply:

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
8:58 AM on Oct. 18 2009**

_Thanks. I'm recovering as well as can be expected, with my injuries._

_—__Mac_

She's skimming an email from someone she worked with at NBC when she's alerted to another new email.

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
9:06 AM on Oct. 18 2009**

_Glad to hear it. What exactly are your injuries? Whoever's running your end has kept the details locked up tight from the wires._

_—__Will_

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
9:16 AM on Oct. 18 2009**

_Are you sure you want the gory details? And that would be James Harper, my AP, who's running our end. And Molly Thompson, my assistant, but I've made her head out to Stuttgart to get us something to work on in the meantime. Our cameraman Danny is holding down fort in Islamabad until I'm discharged._

_—__Mac_

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
9:19 AM on Oct. 18 2009**

_When have I ever shirked away from the gory details?_

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
9:37 PM on Oct. 18 2009**

_Well, Leno. (That's what the guy from Vanity Fair called you, right?) I've got a six inch nasty thing going up the left side of my stomach. By the time we landed in Landstuhl (I was initially stabilized at an international hospital in Islamabad, before the Marines we were with ordered a Medevac) I had developed a clotting problem and wound up losing about five feet of intestine. I'd have to ask Jim which one, but that breaks his "no worrying" policy for me so I'll have to ask you to forgive me for keeping you in the lurch._

_I'm… okay? Pretty stoned. What I can remember is that the nice Navy surgeon has me on 10 mg of morphine every four hours. I'm more uncomfortable at the moment than anything else, although I've been assured that as soon as they start weaning me off the good drugs that I'll be in a lot of pain. Mum and Dad would be here, but the news gave Dad palpitations and his cardiologist wouldn't clear him to fly, which makes me feel extra-special terrible._

_It's nice to hear from you. I miss you. (And Erin Andrews, seriously?)_

Why haven't you replied to my emails, she almost writes. Almost apologizes again, almost tells him she still loves him. She may be out of her mind on opiates, but she knows not to go there unless Will brings it up. He hasn't answered her in years for a reason.

His reply takes a while, and she reminds herself it's the dead of night in Manhattan, and he's probably just gone to bed.

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
10:10 AM on Oct. 18 2009**

_I think Leno and I like being employed, for what it's worth. And I'm sorry to hear about your dad. I know you're probably both even more miserable that you should be right now. But I'm glad that you have someone with you, at least. Even though google is telling me that he isn't old enough to drive a car at night, and the other one you listed only exists on a blog._

_You are more than forgiven for keeping me in the lurch. But Jesus fucking Christ, MacKenzie—five feet of intestine? I worry about 'd better be planning on staying in bed for a good long while, although if I know you you'll be dragging your team back into the thick of it as soon as you can get away with using a tripod as a crutch. Please don't tell the good doctor to take you off the good drugs too soon, crazy lady. I know you think sitting down can be a sign of weakness, but take it easy._

It's not because of the drugs (or not _just_ because of the drugs) but her head is spinning. _I worry about you_, he wrote, hiding it between two ordinary sentences like he was saying nothing at all. Still, Mac thinks. There's no indication that he's read her emails at all. He just heard she was stabbed and dropped her a line, like the dozens of others.

One NBC executive had even joked she should give up her position as an embed and come back and _do something with less of an occupational hazard for the best in the business. _Emails, all from the same people who'd tried to convince her to stay in New York, stay in the country, at least. _You're wasting your talent_, he'd written to her two and a half years ago. _Give me a call when you come home, I'll give you a job._

Back then she hadn't had the words to explain that Will McAvoy was the only anchor she'd ever want to EP for. It's an awful story, trite and cliché, but he was her first, after she'd clawed her way up and won her first Peabody and Charlie had taken notice of her. _He's a little hard to handle, _Charlie had told her, walking her through the bullpen shortly before broadcast. _His current EP went home with a stomach virus after he didn't like the look of the final rundown, but Miss McHale, I think you can give Will a run for his money._

Brian had dumped her two weeks prior and she'd walked into the control room with a facade of self-confidence singularly propped up by adrenaline and the freshly-minted award in her new office and got Will to indict the House for refusing to consider overturning more of the Patriot Act.

And for two years, that was that.

Fingers hovering over the keys on her laptop, her thoughts collect and then scatter, collect and then scatter. She has no idea what to write to him, and sighs heavily when—

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
10:35 AM on Oct. 18 2009**

_Anyway, it's past 4 AM here so I should go to bed. Hang in there._

—and shuts her computer to try to nap before the surgeon is supposed to come by around lunch to check her stitches.

* * *

He doesn't sleep. It seems pointless to even try; he hasn't been able to sleep since the news alert that a CNN reporter had been attacked while covering a Shia protest came down the wire. By the time the identity of the reporter had been confirmed, along with the fact that the reporter would survive, he'd already opened the file in his email account he'd ordered a former assistant to funnel all of Mac's emails into.

He'd been too angry to read them, or maybe too afraid, if he's honest or just because of the indecent hour, and he deleted all of her text messages and voicemails on sight.

But then the hours between the wire reports on her condition grew, and fear had lit up his nerves, exposing them raw. What if MacKenzie was dead? Will didn't know what they were, except that they weren't done.

And if MacKenzie _died _over there…

He read the emails.

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
8:06 AM on July 18 2007**

_I'm only going to be in the country for eight more weeks, after that I'm travelling to Stuttgart where I'll be embedding with the 3rd Battalion 7th Marines. Not sure which platoon yet. But thus far I've been in contact with a Captain Noah Mason, who captains the Headquarter and Service Company. Apparently they're called the Electric Company…_

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
11:48 PM on Aug. 21 2007**

_Please, Will. I'm leaving the country in a month for god knows how long. I'm… I don't know what I'm doing. You told me to leave the show or you would, so I left. I left ACN, I left Manhattan, I left domestic journalism. You won't have to hear about me. But please, I'm leaving for a warzone and I'm half terrified and I don't have a fucking clue what I'm getting myself into or why I'm doing it and just let me know that I'm doing the best thing for you. I love you, please believe me. Brian was two years ago and I was so incredibly stupid, and I should have known better. But I thought we were just dating, and then I fell in love with you…_

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
3:08 AM on Sept. 12 2007**

_Our flight is in ninety minutes, and I'm sitting in the terminal with Jim and Molly and Danny, my team. I know you're asleep. Or you should be. I wanted to say, one last time on American soil, that I'm sorry and I love you…_

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
12:25 AM on Nov. 12 2007**

_I think I thought I loved Brian. But I know I love you._

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
10:36 PM on Dec. 24 2007**

_My parents wanted me to come home for Christmas, but they're still asking about why we've broken up and I've told them it's my fault but they won't leave it at that. I'm in a hotel room in Kabul, and Molly's passed out next to me in bed._

_I can't sleep. And the only English language channel is playing "It's a Wonderful Life" which I can't bring myself to stomach at the moment. I miss you so much it hurts. I don't think I knew I could be a good person until I met you. Or maybe I knew it, but was so narrow-mindedly focused on my career that it didn't matter. I met Brian so young, and we worked together, and it was convenient and I didn't realize until we starting dating that the reason why I couldn't breathe was because Brian was stepping on my neck. I mean, he dumped me at the Peabody Awards reception. How fucking stupid was I?_

_You were there. You were there and he hated that I was with you because you're more successful than him, richer than him, smarter than him, more handsome than him. But you're also a much better person than him by several nautical miles and you were perfect…_

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
3:12 PM on Feb. 28 2008**

_I didn't tell you about Brian to break up with you. Before you… I'd never been in a relationship as serious as ours. I'd somehow gotten to thirty without having a meaningful relationship. What I had with Brian was a lot of bad sex and degradation that I mistook for maturity and some ironic sort of depth. And maybe there had been some genuine camaraderie between us, in the beginning, but I should have known by the time he dumped me for the last time that it was toxic. But I don't know. I think I wanted the upper hand. He had rejected me and I was hung up on it and you were there and I didn't think anyone could seriously like me._

_But you did, and…_

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
12:11 PM on June 2 2008**

_Well, it's been a year. I still love you, whatever that counts for. And I'm still writing, which is probably pathetic and definitely unwanted and I should stop. I hurt you, brutally. I know that. But I didn't do it intentionally. I would never hurt you intentionally, and I'm sorry._

_I love you, Will. I hope you're doing well…_

And he scrolls through them again, picking and choosing which ones to reread, not even planning to attempt going to bed at this point. Her most recent email is from two weeks ago, right before the escalation of the level of violence at the protests.

He doesn't know what he should feel.

All he knows is that he doesn't want to contemplate what it'd feel like if Mac was dead and not wasted off her ass in Germany, recovering, and whatever he's feeling made him unthinking enough to write her an email like there wasn't the Atlantic Ocean and twenty-nine months between them.

But now he knows that this is his MacKenzie. That she's been shot at and teargassed and stabbed across three different countries and that she still loves him.

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
5:16 AM on Oct 18 2009**

_Thanks. It was great to hear from you, Will._

He doesn't know what it makes him feel, but it gives him pause.

* * *

Her nap is cut short by the surgeon coming early to poke and prod her and leave her in more pain than when he first stepped into her hospital room. Jim heads out to grab her something edible for lunch and exhaustion tugs once again at her eyelids, dragging her into a medicated sleep.

She wakes hours later, and after Jim forces her to eat at least some of the sandwich he bought her and she, in return, forces him to go back to the hotel for a bit to get some work done, she reaches again for her laptop. Will, she imagines, is done with her. Despite his politeness (which was more than what she could expect from him, or was owed) he evaded her comments about missing him and about Erin Andrews. He's checked in, and now he's done, and seeing someone else.

(Even if she is a bit too young for him.)

But it's good to know that he'd care if she died.

CNN wants an incident report as soon as possible, so she should work on that—even though Jim and Molly said they would write something up she could attach her name to.

Outlook alerts her to a dozen or so new emails since she fell asleep, and at the top of the pile is:

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
4:48 PM on Oct. 18 2009**

_Yeah, so sleeping was a bust. How are you feeling? (That question is probably going to get annoying, I know.) I just got back from an affiliates breakfast. Charlie kept me from my multiple attempts to fling myself off the balcony of the executive dining room. Thankfully, Leno couldn't make it… okay, I'm clearly tired because that was terrible. (And now I'm imagining you telling me that I don't have to be tired to be terrible, because clearly you've read the article. And since you did read the article, the thing with Erin Andrews was a publicity stunt that ESPN wanted to make them seem more credible, and help her come back from the stalking thing. How dating makes you seem credible I have no idea, but it was good for ratings.)_

_People were talking about you. At least the ones who know anything about broadcast journalism were. You've caused quite a bit of excitement… I'd imagine there's quite a few headhunters trying to ply you with the luxuries of Manhattan right now and take advantage of your vulnerable state?_

_Keep me posted._

_—__Will_

She has no idea what this means. Except that he wants her to keep emailing him. And that he wants her to know that he doesn't have a relationship with Erin Andrews. Hesitantly, she begins to type a response.

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
5:04 PM on Oct 18 2009**

_Ah, yes. I should have guessed it all came down to ratings. I was thinking that the Hugh Hefner look (Ms. Andrews is what? Sixteen years younger than you?) didn't quite mesh with the plaid button ups and Nordstrom's sweaters. And by the way, who's dressing you these days? Fire them, for the sake of your female audience, if you're really concerned about your viewers…_

_And never wear pinstripes on the air ever again. Thank you._

_(Now you don't have to just imagine me taunting you. Although I promise a lot of this is the morphine talking. Writing. Whatever.)_

_And people can speculate all they'd like. My ass will be back in Islamabad as soon as I can stand upright and hold a microphone. I've got a story to finish. Although what story, at the moment I'm not so certain. The one we were chasing ended me up here, and CNN's called us off the chase for political reasons. And that is… more than I should probably be disclosing to you, from a work account._

_Anyway, things are starting to hurt enough to make my eyes cross, which means the kind machine will beep shortly and I'll be high as a fucking kite for the next few hours. I do, however, promise to keep you posted. And how is Charlie? We've fallen out of contact since I've gone abroad._

_—__Mac_

A few hours later, when her thoughts coalesce back into something somewhat cogent, she looks at the email she sent and cringes. _Too forward_, she chastises herself, _too familiar. _But his response is long, and considerate, and kind.

Too kind, really, because her eyes burn with tears and she turns her face to hide them from Jim, once again in residence in the recliner next to her bed.

She keeps him posted, warning when she and Jim and Molly return to Pakistan two weeks later that she might not be able to email him regularly.

_I understand, _he writes.

For the most part, their correspondence remains sporadic. In addition to reporting what CNN wants them to file on, they don't quite stop poking around, trying to dig up sources on the independent military contractors on the ground in Islamabad. But Mac finds she can no longer trust their sources, or herself, stumbling blind in the middle of the night through their small apartment in the diplomatic district, finding solace in the emails that Will sends her at odd hours.

But she needs to finish this story. They've been sitting on the whistleblower piece on the Blackwater presence in Pakistan for five months now. Even if she can't report it, she wants to finish it, if only so the way her stomach pulls and twinges and the way Molly's brash exterior is crumbling and the way Jim follows her doggedly through the streets—if only so it means something.

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
10:21 PM on Nov. 26 2009**

_You already won a Peabody this year. And an RFK. And like five other things that your Wikipedia page says you've won. Can't you call it quits so the rest of us don't look so bad? Please confirm that you still have to subtract on your fingers..._

* * *

He sighs, unsure how to respond to her most recent reply. In the hospital she'd been lively, almost manic. But she's become more reserved, self-deprecating in a biting way she's never been before.

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
5:38 PM on Dec. 23 2009**

_I'm home. Well, my parent's townhouse in Belgravia. I have a room here, though, even if I've only slept here a handful of times. I miss the Alexandria house. My dad is doing well after his scare last month. The doctors have him resting. Mum and Dad have had to cancel a trip to Athens, but they're determined to be chipper about it. I am being deluged with relations, most of whom are fond of reminding me that they haven't seen me since I was at Cambridge. I've mostly been tossing Molly at them, hoping the uncouth American will keep them occupied… not that I've ever been considered particularly English by them, either._

_Mum's made me go to bed early so I'm kind of just sitting up in my room, going bored out of my mind. I think I can feel grey matter dribbling out my ears. Are you at Liz's yet? Have your nieces and nephews properly accosted you?_

He hasn't gone to his sister's for Christmas since the breakup. Mac had come along, the year before, had teased him in regards to Liz and Fiona telling her that she was the first girl he'd brought home in decades. Had been perfect, really, with his sister's kids fighting for a place on her lap and fended off the prying questions for them.

The year before had been at the Belgravia townhouse—which had been a recent purchase, at the time—with her parents, and they'd spent a week in the room where Mac is holed up now.

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
5:47 PM on Dec. 23 2009**

_Poor you, being forced to go to bed at a decent hour and sleep for more than four hours in one go. I distinctly remember that bed being comfortable, you know, so shouldn't you be appreciating it while it lasts? Whatever, I trust Scooter or whatever his name is will probably be guarding the door under your mother's orders, making sure you don't try to escape._

_I'm not going to Liz's this year. Elliot Hirsch's wife had a baby a month ago so I'm handling the Christmas Eve show tomorrow and the show on the 26th so he can stay home with them. My asshole EP isn't overjoyed, so our new senior producer is stepping in… and will probably be replacing Adrian full time after the New Year. Don Keefer. I don't know if you know of him? He's a bit of an upstart in primetime._

_When are you heading back to Islamabad?_

_—__W_

He hasn't told Charlie about any of this—just simply walked into work the Monday after Mac was stabbed and nodded placidly while Charlie updated him on her condition like nothing had changed at all. It's not that he doesn't want Charlie to know that he and MacKenzie are back in contact, it's that… he doesn't want Charlie to know that he and MacKenzie are back in contact. If Charlie knew, it'd be biweekly meetings on love and forgiveness, and it's not that he doesn't love MacKenzie—

Because he still does, and he's not certain if he ever stopped.

So he dried himself out until he was brittle and bitter and now he has Charlie and both his staff turnover rate and viewing audience are through the roof and he thought for a long time that it could keep him happy enough, be enough to keep him going. He'd been so angry at her for so long, his anger coming to a pointed rage the moment he calculated the odds that it was Mac who had been stabbed, that of course it was Mac—careless and inconsiderate MacKenzie—who had been stabbed, who could die en route to Germany and leave him short.

Because a small, niggling part of him still hates her for it, but he loves her.

Now this is what keeps him going. Waking up to emails, even if Mac only has the time to send them every couple of days, and sometimes they're only a couple of sentences and sometimes he just tracks her through the stories she files, because all she has the time and energy to send him is: _Fuck me. And fuck you, for having a literal desk job._

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
6:18 PM on Dec. 23 2009**

_Well, I distinctly remember this bed being a lot more comfortable with you in it. I think I'm too used to sleeping on our shitty pull-out sofa at the apartment. And in cars. And on mats. And the ground. I don't know. I haven't been able to sleep since the Green Zone. I did catch up on my sleep in Germany, though, so I should be good for a year or two, I'll have you know._

_Liz must be disappointed. Actually, her kids are probably more disappointed. You're their only wealthy relative, so you better have shipped their presents to get there in time for Christmas._

_You've hired Don Keefer? I gave him his first summer internship, back when he was doing his undergrad at NYU, in '98. I caught up with him briefly when I was in Atlanta in '07. I remember him as very efficient. No-nonsense. Has an agenda, though, and plays hardball from what I've last heard about him. I remember him as a pretty good guy? A little directionless in his personal life, but aren't we all…_

_I think my mother intends to make me go to church tomorrow. The last time I went to church the incense put you to sleep and you drooled on my dress._

_We're staying in London until January 2nd, then flying Stuttgart for a week to do some work at the UCC._

_—__M_

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
6:39 PM on Dec. 23 2009**

_Yeah, well, you were the one who was so adamant about going to midnight mass with my family. How you managed to stay awake I'll never know, considering you weren't the one of us raised Catholic. And if I recall correctly, that wasn't the last time I drooled on you that Christmas… never been more thankful that Liz has too many kids to have a guest room. I don't remember much about the hotel where we stayed, except that that bed was pretty comfortable too._

_Any bed with you in it, I've found, is more comfortable. But hey, you're the one who's chosen the life of sleeping on shitty mattresses and the ground._

_—__W_

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
10:33 AM on Dec. 24 2009**

_Shit, Mac. I didn't mean it like that._

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
10:54 AM on Dec. 24 2009**

_Seriously, MacKenzie. I didn't mean it like that. I wasn't thinking. I just meant that you can come home any time you'd like, or choose to report from Stuttgart or Ramstein or any of those military German cities you kind of grew up in and literally no one would fault you for choosing to work from a place where you're not getting teargassed or stabbed and can sleep in a real bed. You've reported more real news in a day than I have in my entire career._

_And, okay. We broke up—it'll be three years in June. We should be able to talk about it without hurting each other, I think. Or at least acknowledge that it happened._

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
11:10 AM on Dec. 24 2009**

_Honestly, I'm impressed that it doesn't happen more often, considering what I did. _

_Impressed isn't the right word… _

_I can't think of the right word. You're too much of good person for "impressed."_

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
11:24 AM on Dec. 24 2009**

_I'm really not too much of a good person for "impressed," but I thank you anyway._

He should tell her, he thinks. That he's read all of her emails, and knows all of her arguments and feelings on the situation, but in a span of twelve hours he's already sent her from making quips about their time in bed together to being too nervous to choose her words so Will thinks he's probably already done enough to her first Christmas with her parents in years.

What they have between them is fragile—perhaps only in his mind, perhaps because he's too afraid to even start to consider that what he and Mac have is, in fact, too strong to be completely severed—and he shouldn't compromise it.

Charlie would call him a coward for it.

But then again, that's the exact reason why he hasn't told Charlie.

* * *

**Thanks for reading! I've had a hellish week, so comments would be hella rad, but no pressure. **


	2. Never Fall Away

**A/N: **Thanks to everyone who was super awesome and left reviews on Part I. I am firmly settled into my new house, and am currently sitting in the campus coffee shop waiting to head over to the history building for my 2 o'clock. Also I decided (because when have brevity and I ever been friends?) that in addition to this part that there will be an epilogue, which I hope I have the time to write tomorrow night.

Thanks as usual to Meg and Pippa, my betas.

* * *

**PART II: NEVER FALL AWAY**

* * *

It happens slowly, and then all at once. Her insomnia worsens, and when she can sleep it's violent, her head filled with images of the crowd crushing in, the face of the man who slipped the knife into her belly, and being unable to breathe as she fights her way, being swallowed up whole by the concrete. Her mouth perpetually tastes bitter, and she's forever bringing a bottle of water to her lips to try and wash it away. She buries herself back into work after the holiday, revisiting sources again and again, and when she refuses to sleep, numbs the anxiety by tracking the guards down again in the records, going over her notes, going over the footage.

She winds up eating very little, her stomach clenching down on any food she brings herself to swallow and sending it back up again.

Her team she sends out more and more without her, instead choosing to hide in the tiny kitchen in their apartment as her panic waxes and wanes in twenty-four hour cycles, eventually leaving her nerves deadened enough that she can bear a few hours of sleep without waking up with the taste of dirt and blood in her mouth.

Emails from Will get pushed to the wayside along with food and leaving the apartment and every so often she looks at his newest email and feels a pang of guilt at her lack of response that motivates her to come up with a reply. But the doubt in her head grows louder, tells her that she should just leave him alone, that he's better off without her, just like how her team works better with her here, at their makeshift work space at the kitchen table.

January slides by quickly, but February is missed calls with CNN higher ups and psychiatric evaluations evaded—a blur, really, and March seems like it will be too, until:

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
4:19 AM on March 3 2010**

_I think we should video chat. I want to actually talk to you. Getting made fun of by you in real time is a lot more fun than the text medium._

Taking a gulp of water from her bottle, she leans back in her chair to peer into the living room where Jim is sprawled out on the sofa, the soft glow from the television illuminating his sleep-slacked body. Unlike her, Jim came out of a war zone a heavy sleeper.

She considers it, even though there's not a chance in the world that it won't be wholly awkward, and that she won't run out of things to say quickly before blurting out her apologies, or saying something insensitive about Brian or the breakup that they still quite haven't figured out how to navigate, even since Christmas.

Still. If it's what Will wants.

More quietly, her nerves laid out raw, she acknowledges that it's what she wants, too. Seeing Will's face might do her some good.

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
4:23 AM on March 3 2010**

_Sure. When?_

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
4:25 AM on March 3 2010**

_Why in the hell are you still awake, you lunatic?_

**To: wdmcavoy  
From: mmchale  
4:28 AM on March 3 2010**

_I have a filing deadline in two hours._

_I just finished, though._

The bitter taste rises in her mouth at the lie of it, but she swallows it down. And then startles when a new window pops open on her desktop, Google asking her if she wishes to decline or accept the video call.

She's sure that she looks like she's crawled out of some dark crevice of the Earth, but clicks accept before she freezes and does nothing at all.

* * *

The last time he saw MacKenzie her hair was cropped at her shoulders, her face was made up, and all her clothes had designer labels. His mental image of her—a woman with a carefully maintained professional image—is immediately and jarringly overwritten by the woman who appears on his computer screen.

She's beautiful, Will thinks. Beautiful, but battered. Not fragile, by any stretch, but exhausted and weary-bruised.

Her hair is longer, half-piled on top of her head and sliding out of a clip. A cheap pair drugstore reading glasses (or so he guesses) are perched crookedly on her nose, the glare on the lenses momentarily obscuring the deep purple shadows ringing her eyes. The list that his brain compiles without his permission stacks up quickly—she's too thin, the bones of her wrists sticking out through her skin, she's too pale, her skin taking an unhealthy turn from pink to grey, or so it seems in the dim light. And then something else: a red and navy plaid flannel shirt that hangs loosely off her shoulders.

It's his; it's been missing for years.

"Nice shirt."

He tries to forget his reason for wanting to see her face—the ebb of replies to his emails, the abrupt changes of tone in her messages, the flux of reports hitting the wires coming out of Islamabad—when she blanches, but recovers quickly.

"You want it back?" she asks, eyes flickering towards her own screen before she turns to shuffle a stack of notes on the table and foist them out of camera.

"Nice glasses."

Mac rolls her eyes, leaning back in her chair and stretching her arms up and behind her head. "Thanks, I'm getting old."

"That's a recent development," he muses, acting as if he doesn't care at all.

Pushing her glasses up her nose, she scoffs at him. "Not all of us have a hair and makeup team to pretty us up, thank you."

"Does it look like I've seen hair and makeup recently?"

"No, your cowlick is sticking up," she says, snorting at the tabletop. Absently, he pats down the hair at the crown of her head, which Mac looks up just in time to see. "Did you seriously just—"

"It's a reflex," he demurs. "So, this is your apartment?" he asks, and Mac rolls her eyes at the obvious attempt at the change in topic, but leans back in her chair glancing behind her anyway.

Even with the spotty webcam feed, he can tell that the apartment is typical embed fare: cinderblock walls, low-rate appliances, shitty furniture, dim lighting. The neighborhood is probably secure enough, even if Mac and her team are reporting from areas in Islamabad that aren't. He wonders if he could get Mac to divulge enough information that he could track down which building she's in, and see if he could do anything to make it any better.

A real bed, at least. She's recovering from a massive abdominal injury. CNN owes her a fucking bed, and failing that, he can buy her one.

"It's not a Tribeca loft, but it's home… enough. We were living in the Marriott at first, until the assignment became long term," she says, glancing sideways into what he assumes must be the main room. "At least we're no longer making ramen in the coffeemaker. Well, I'm not. Jim still is." Leaning back even more, she casts her face into the light. The lines on her face and the deep bags under her eyes become more pronounced, her hair appearing to be greasy and limp. Sighing, she faces forward again. "What?"

He's been staring.

"You look…"

_Sick? _he thinks, but wonders if she'd balk at that, from him.

"Like shit?" she finishes with a dry, self-deprecating laugh.

Will opens and closes his mouth around a few aborted replies. "I wouldn't disparage you a good night's sleep."

MacKenzie clearly needs much more than that, but that's not a conversation to have when you're well over three thousand miles away from each other, and exes nonetheless. One of the members of her team, he thinks. One of them has to be able to get her to take better care of herself. Or maybe he's overreacting; this is Mac, after all.

She makes her own decisions.

"Yeah, that's not happening," she says drolly, scrubbing her hands over her face. "We have to report to the DAO in ninety minutes."

"Then I'll say that I'm a little alarmed that you're about to go out there on the very little sleep you've gotten."

Is this how the stabbing happened?

"Honestly, Will, I'm used to it. I'll sleep when our meetings are over." Folding her arms behind her head again, she stretches her shoulders and neck, tendons popping loudly. She closes her eyes for a long moment, breathing deeply before slitting her eyes back open. "Don't look at me like that. Islamabad is one of the safest cities we've reported from."

"Hon, you were stabbed," he gently reminds her.

She waves it off. "That was inconvenient, yes—"

"Mac!"

The terror he felt when he learned that _she _was the one in critical condition surges up his spine, cold fear pooling in his stomach.

She scoffs. "What? I'm perfectly capable of making my own bad decisions, thank you."

"You could, you know, come home where you're not in danger of being stabbed." Mac lifts an eyebrow at him, lips quirking into an ephemeral, and entirely sardonic, grin. "Well, considerably less danger. In a control room, at least—"

Unless she's gotten rid of her apartment, she's in midtown, which is relatively safe.

"And do what? Broadcast journalism has, by and large, seemed to have decided to capitalize on voyeurism and for-sale bullshit rather than do actual fucking news. At least here I feel like—like I'm doing something, rather than working under some executive who wants me to jump through hoops and fill ratings quotas."

"Doing something? Throwing yourself into harm every day?" Being reckless does not inherently count as _something. _Although, Will supposes, it's probably good that Mac has transferred her carelessness from her personal life to her professional life.

—until his brain supplies him with the image he's agonized over, the vision of Mac, bloodied and pale, her limbs splayed in unnatural angles on the pavement. Unmoving, unbreathing, her notebook in her hand.

(He doesn't want Mac to be willing to make a martyr of herself for the story.)

Uncomfortable, she squirms in her seat. "Well—"

(Or find a way to place blame on him for whatever she's transferred her guilt over Brian to.)

"And Christ, Mac," he continues, sitting up on his couch, "the county as polarized today as it was during the Civil War. The _Civil War _, what exactly do you expect us to do?"

"Your jobs," she replies heavily. "So those of us over _here _don't feel like we're being left in the goddamn lurch while you report on panda cams with twitter feeds scurrying across the bottom of your screens."

He barely refrains from rolling his eyes, dropping his feet down from his coffee table to sit up fully. "Well I'm sorry I can't live up to your standards."

She swallows hard, picking lint off the shoulder of the flannel shirt. He notices then just how tattered it is.

"You're being sarcastic," she delicately apprises, not quite looking at her computer screen.

"Oh how you know me," he answers facetiously.

* * *

It isn't supposed to be happening like this. He's not supposed to ask about her health, or tell her she should be somewhere safer. He's not supposed to be gentle with her, he's not supposed to be _looking _at her like this, like nothing has changed and they can spar without ripping themselves in two.

They're going to rip themselves in two again—she's already begun with herself.

Why not keep going?

"There's nothing more important in a democracy than a well-informed electorate. When there's no information or, much worse, wrong information, it can lead to calamitous decisions and clobber any attempts at vigorous debate. That's why I produce the news," she says, hugging her arms around herself. And then more quietly, reminding herself that she hasn't seen the inside of a newsroom in three years. "Or at least try to."

She wants to touch him. Not that she could, if they weren't speaking via webcam, but she wants to touch him, put her hands on his shoulders or brush her fingers around a wrist or fix his goddamn hair.

"I still don't see the argument for what you're doing over there." His face shutters with a disgruntled expression. He leans almost out of frame, giving her a glimpse at the penthouse loft he's moved into since they broke up.

"You do understand that I have emails which state that I've reported more news in a day than you have in an entire career—" she starts, wondering why she's wearing his stupid flannel shirt, why she's kept it for this long, even though the hems are frayed and the elbows are threadbare. And she knows why. "You're spinning out of control."

(_ No _, she desperately thinks, the sentiment whirling opaque just below the level of consciousness. _You are, MacKenzie. _)

"No I'm not."

"You are!"

"This isn't non-profit theater, Mac, you know that we have advertisers and—"

"And this is why I'm over here, risking my neck—so maybe two hundred people see a good story, rather than the two million watching you not bothering anyone." She's angry, even though some stalwart part of her reminds her that she has no right to be. But for everything that embedding has taken away from her, it has given her a startlingly uncompromising perspective. For-entertainment news is unpalatable to her, now, after seeing limbs blown off and watching people die while waiting for medics who would never come. "What the hell happened, Will? When I left it was a good show, _Leno. _"

"Like I've said, I kind of like getting paid, if it's all the same to you," he answers, narrowing his eyes at her.

This Will is not the Will that she left behind, she has to remind herself. This Will talks to her, and answers her from behind carefully-maintained fences, careful to respond without giving up too much of himself. This Will doesn't care about the show that they used to do together, this Will doesn't want her as his EP, he doesn't want her opinion.

"It's not all the same to me, you punk," she says with a scowl, keeping her voice low enough not to wake Jim. God, sleep. She should have slept, but then it was 4 AM and she had essentially committed herself to pulling an all-nighter but she hasn't slept in thirty-six hours and every emotion is hitting her harder than it should be, is pulling words out of her with more force than they should be spoken. "I have a six-inch scar still healing on my stomach. And with your IQ and your talent… you should put it to some patriotic fucking use! You were perfect, and now you're a hack in an ill-fitting suit and in desperate need a of a haircut. Which demographic does _that _hit? And where does it say that a good news show can't be popular?"

"Nielsen ratings," Will quips, quick on a snappish retort. "God, did you find a leftover Vicodin in your stash, or something?"

She ignores his attempt to shrug her off.

"Between your brains, charm, good looks and affability—"

"And with what fucking producer, Mac?" he asks, spitting the words out quickly and venomously. "You know what happened to the show? You walked out on it."

That stops her short.

"I walked out on you, too," she tells him carefully, voice trembling under the strain of her anger. He was _there _, she thinks. "But you let me. You _told _me to. And here I am, exactly where you told me to be: far, far away from you."

She doesn't quite know how to read the expression on his face in response to that, and that makes her angry too. Angry, because it's easier to be angry that it is to be scared that she could fall out of love with him, that doing this to herself has been a waste. Because it's easier to be angry than to feel fear in this aspect of her life, in addition to all other things.

But he never gets the chance to respond to her.

"What's that?" he asks.

From the bedroom the opening to _Hooked On a Feeling _is blaring from Molly's alarm clock radio, playing the first track on the mixed CD of 70s and 80s love songs that Noah made for her months ago, the same CD that they wake up to every damn day. Molly herself won't actually make an appearance until _Come and Get Your Love _, but Jim and Danny will.

"Molly's awake," she tells him, hovering the cursor over the end-call button. "I have to go."

Barely giving him a chance to respond, she hangs up, immediately feeling a pang of guilt at the brief expression of desperation that she saw on his face before doing so.

* * *

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
**10:48 PM on March 11 2010

_So I guess it's your turn to ignore me now._

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
2:08 PM on March 13 2010**

_I didn't mean that as a suggestion._

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
1:33 AM on March 14 2010**

_Okay, fine. I'll say it first. I'm sorry. I let my temper get the better of me, and it was insensitive to bring up what happened to you like I did. It's your life, and I have a lot of respect for what you're doing over there. But it's your life, and I live mine. And sometimes I get worried about you. It's a weird thing I do._

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
1:18 PM on March 14 2010**

_That's why I wanted to see you, anyway. Not that I don't… want to see you._

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
5:20 PM on March 19 2010**

_Mac, Jesus Christ. I said I'm sorry._

_Are you on assignment? It's occurred to me that you could be out on assignment. You said before that you'd be without signal for weeks in Afghanistan because you couldn't let the Taliban trace any messages back to your location and your encryption programs weren't good enough._

_Where in the hell are you? You can't just fucking disappear like this. Shit. Didn't you get anything out of our argument?_

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
12:58 AM on March 20 2010**

_You haven't filed a story since March 5th. I'm looking at the wires. You haven't filed a report in two weeks. This hasn't happened since 2008. Yes—I checked. Make of that what you will. Mac, what the fuck is going on? You're not dead. I'd get a Google alert at the least if you were dead. Which is, coincidentally, more than I can get about you right now._

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
12:24 PM on March 21 2010**

_I just heard from someone I got on the switchboard at CNN that you are no longer a CNN employee. I told them they'd lost their fucking mind._

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
4:04 PM on March 21 2010**

_Brooke Baldwin just told me that you were released from your CNN contract on the 6th. MacKenzie, where the hell are you and are you okay? You've just gotten sick of CNN's sensationalism and gone rogue, right? Asking around your dad's friends for the money for your own start-up?_

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
11:18 PM on March 25 2010**

_I have it… from multiple sources (and I only asked around because I'm worried, I promise) that you failed a psych evaluation and were diagnosed with PTSD, CNN fired you for it, and now you're in DC debriefing at the Navy Yard. Which, first off: I will find you a lawyer and you will sue CNN for wrongful termination or I will represent you and you will sue CNN for wrongful termination. And secondly, please let me know you're all right. Not… all right. I know you're probably not all right._

_I'm here. I'll be here, if you need someone to talk to. Or someone to listen. Or read, I guess. I one hundred percent cop to being an insensitive jackass, but I can read._

_I'm an idiot. You were stabbed. You had been chasing a dangerous story and you were stabbed and I thought just because you were getting better physically, then all was going to be fine. You're not fine. And that's okay. I don't care how, just let me know that you're safe. I promise, MacKenzie. I'm never going to hurt you again. Let me help you. I'll help you get a job, any job you want. Or if you can't work, I'll help you pay your bills. I know CNN's been paying you in coupons and meal vouchers and what the rent on your apartment was three years ago._

_Has CNN blocked you from accessing this email account? Is that the problem? I'll ask around and see if anyone has a new address for you. Someone at NBC said you'd applied, so they'd have a new one on your resume, although you really shouldn't have to send out a resume. I mean, you're you. By the way, you should sue NBC too, for discrimination. And ABC, from what I've heard. _

**To: mmchale  
From: wdmcavoy  
8:41 AM on March 26 2010**

_I'm getting on a plane with Don and my senior producer to do a panel at Northwestern. The one I mentioned awhile back. I'll be offline for a few hours, but please, Mac. Email me. Send up a flare. Smoke signals. Something._

_—Will_

* * *

She just wants to see him without him seeing her. After that, MacKenzie doesn't know what she wants. She _wanted _to chase the story about the independent military contractors, about Blackwater guards terrorizing Pakistani citizens, about Xe Services agents brutalizing people on the ground to collect intel. And then a Blackwater agent paid off an agent provocateur to lead her into the middle of a protest, agitate it into a riot, and stab her for getting too close to the story.

Even after CNN called her off, she kept chasing it anyway.

And now she's out of a job.

Out of a job, and heavily medicated.

Will knows. Of course he knows. Everyone knows. Charlie knows, and keeps calling her, telling her he'll come down to DC to see her, and that they should talk, which is probably code for "I can't hire you because even though you want nothing more in the world to return to a newsroom, you have PTSD and require enough alprazolam to tranquilize a horse in order to function normally, god knows how much you'd need to manage the chaos of a broadcast, so I'm going to take you out for an expensive brunch and hold your hand sympathetically." She has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is mostly manifested in how painfully exhausted she is all the time, her body fighting remaining upright and her mind refusing to piece together thoughts and daring to refuse to sleep peacefully all the same.

On day twelve of being back in the States, she flies out to O'Hare International the same day that Jim rents a car to drive up to visit his family in Delaware and Molly has an interview with the director of the International Relations PhD program at Princeton.

The flight is a little under two hours, and she brings everything she currently owns (that isn't in a storage unit on Long Island) with her, in the new Louis Vuitton luggage that she bought to replace the falling-apart duffel bags that she's toted across two different warzones. She doesn't have enough to have to check a bag, and steps out into Chicago with one bag slung over each shoulder, breathing through pursed lips as she tries not to panic before she has the chance to hail a cab that will take her to Evanston.

She just wants to see Will, even if she can't face him. Not when she's come home like this, broken. Just like she set out to be three years ago, in the face of what she's done.

But there's no atonement for what she's done, and it's all gone to waste.

Just ask all the people who won't hire her at CNN, ABC, NBC… she can't face Will, can't ask him to help her get out of this, when she got herself into it because they broke up.

_Congratulations, MacKenzie. You ruined your own life again, but at least you didn't take anyone with you this time._

She ends up quietly creeping into the auditorium, more than a few minutes late. Will is sandwiched between a smiling painful stereotype of a Republican and an endearingly deluded liberal sprouting off statistics in favor of rebutting anyone's argument, playing the harmless moderate.

Or would be playing, if he was _saying anything at all._

Although, Mac supposes, that _is _the harmless moderate in today's climate.

Will keeps scanning the crowd, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Clutching her purse where it sits on her lap to her stomach, she worries that he's seen her. But she reminds herself that no matter how good Will is in front of cameras, he's never handled live audiences that were bigger than the inside of a courtroom very well, and there are at least five hundred people in attendance at Northwestern today.

He's just anxious, she tells herself, until he looks directly at her with a nervous expression on his face.

The two pundits keep talking over each other, louder and louder until the moderator jabs the tip of his pen into the fray, calling it to an end.

"Will—anything to add?"

Tearing his eyes away from the audience, Will smiles nervously before smoothing a mask of unflinching sarcasm over his face. "I think we'd need a more precise definition of perverted."

The audience laughs, and Mac sighs, and then hears his voice echoing in her head.

_You know what happened to the show? You walked out on it._

Well, she's here, and he knows she's here. And she has nothing left to lose. Barely breathing, she pulls her folio out from her purse, flipping open to her new notepad. _Well _, she thinks. _Here's his smoke signal._

The moderator, casting Will a skeptic glance, turns to the line of students at the microphone. "Okay… we'll go onto the next question. You sir."

* * *

He makes himself look at the grungy twenty-whatever at the front of the line. "Hi, my name's Stephen, I'm a junior, and my question's for Will McAvoy. Do you consider yourself a Democrat, or Republican, or Independent?"

For a long moment that he hopes comes across as consideration, he stares at MacKenzie. The relief he feels at her appearance is accompanied by a distinct feeling of weightlessness, and he barely recovers a nonplussed answer for whoever the fuck is trying to get something out of him.

"I consider myself a New York Jets fan, Stephen," he says, looking at the kid in question again.

Once again, the moderator (some Northwestern J-school ideologue whose name he's already forgotten) makes a stab at making him join into the shouting match. "Since it's been brought up—you've almost religiously avoiding stating or even implying a political allegiance. Is that because, as a news anchor, you feel the integrity of your broadcast would be compromised?"

Even from a hundred feet away, he can see Mac roll her eyes at that.

"That sounds like a good answer, I'll take it," he defers.

The moderator briefly looks down at his cards. "There was a short piece on _Vanity Fair's _website, by Marshall Westbrook, you probably saw it. Where he calls you the Jay Leno of news anchors. You're popular because you don't bother anyone."

He remembers what Mac said, her intense disappointment in what _News Night _, and by extension (or perhaps first of all) he, has become.

"Yeah," he answers slowly.

"How do you feel about that?" the moderator asks.

Back when Mac was his EP—and his girlfriend—all that mattered was that was that they were proud of what they were doing. Him, and Mac, and Charlie. And that was how it was, until Mac left.

(But MacKenzie is back, and she's here, in sight but out of reach, and since he spotted her in the crowd ten or so minutes ago all he can think of is her emails, the litany of _I love you's _and _I'm sorry's, _in conjunction with network executives saying they can't hire her now, she's a liability, and he just wants to haul off and punch one of them in the face, remind them how not six months ago they were trying to capitalize off her stabbing and get her to come home.

Maybe he should have told her that he read the emails, maybe then she would have responded, not hid from him, not felt like she had to buy a ticket to get to see him.

Will doesn't know how he feels, but it gives him pause.

But she's okay, and that's what matters.)

He scans the crowd. "Jealous of the size of Jay's audience," he deadpans, feeling a bit of his anxiety lessen when they laugh.

But the moderator doesn't let up. "Are you willing say here to tonight whether you lean right or left?"

"I've voted for candidates run by both major parties," he cages. Although honestly, all someone would have to do is Google him and figure out that he's worked for Bush 41 and the RNC, but apparently that's beyond people.

The moderator sighs. "Let's move onto the next question."

A blonde girl moves her way to the front of the line, and wrings her hands. "Hi, my name is Jenny, I'm a sophomore and this for all three of you: can you say in one sentence or less—what—you know what I mean. Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?"

He almost rolls his eyes. _It's not._

Sharon, though, is quick to answer. "Diversity and opportunity."

The moderator turns to the conservative. "Louis?"

"Ah freedom and freedom, let's keep it that way."

Will anticipates Louis' answer, staring at the edge of the stage to hide his incredulity, before failing to resist flicking his gaze back to Mac.

And then, his turn. "Will?"

_Don't say anything I can't clean up after, _Don had warned him before sending him out from the green room. Mac isn't his EP. Don is.

Faintly, a voice in his head tells him that it's a cowardly excuse. If Mac could go to the Middle East and back, suffer through all she has, and come back here, he should be able to live up to decent standards.

He used to, didn't he? Back when it didn't matter whether the audience boomed or if every op-ed on the East Coast was slamming him for being un-American. He did it for himself. Largely for Mac, but also for himself.

Because it was good back then, wasn't it?

He's going to find Mac after this, and—

He realizes he needs to answer.

"The New York Jets," he says again, for laughs. The audience reacts as he expects.

The moderator, on the other hand, does not. "No, I'm gonna hold you to an answer on that. What makes America the greatest country in the world?"

He answers with an irreverent flip of his hand. "Well, Louis and Sharon said it. Diversity and opportunity and freedom and freedom."

But he's drawn once more to MacKenzie, and looks up to see her fumbling with something in her lap, before holding it up—

_IT'S NOT. BUT IT CAN BE._

"I'm not letting you go back to the airport without answering the question."

(The Chicago Waldorf, actually, since he didn't feel like doing the turnaround, and Charlie didn't fight him on it since it's a Friday.)

The law school answer then, he thinks, panicking inwardly.

"Well, our Constitution is a masterpiece. James Madison was a genius. The Declaration of Independence is for me the single greatest piece of American writing." "You don't look satisfied."

_IT'S NOT, _she holds up again.

It only worked _back then _because he had Mac, not Don, or any of the others in his long line of incompetent EPs. Who were incompetent, he allows himself to think, by virtue of not being Mac. What if he doesn't do this? What if he doesn't give a real answer? The relief at Mac being here, seeing her in one piece, is palpable. But if he doesn't answer like he knows the statistics, knows the nuances and the arguments and the facts just as well as he would when walking in to prosecute a case, then what?

Does Mac walk out of his life again? Is he willing to risk that? Is the audience more important? He's already let Mac down—

"One's a set of laws and the other is a declaration of war. I want a human moment from you," the moderator demands. "What about the people? Why is it—"

_BUT IT CAN BE._

Mac bites her lip, looking at him hopefully.

No, he thinks. He's not willing to risk it. She's fucked a lot of it up, but so has he, and far more recently than her.

And he loves her. She never stopped writing, so now he—

Giving her one last hard look, he turns to the moderator, feeling his shoulders push themselves back. "It's _not _the greatest country in the world, Professor. That's my answer."

The moderator startles. "You're saying—?"

"Yes," he answers, entirely certain.

Scrambling, the moderator shuffles his cards. "Let's talk about—"

_Not a chance._

In the distance, a wide smile splits Mac's face, and it's all he can see.

* * *

Will isn't picking up his phone. Logically, it's probably because a hundred people are trying to call him right now. But Mac can't find a flight back to DC until tomorrow morning, so she gives up on calling Will and calls for a taxi and directs the driver to the Sheraton, shoving her notepad back into her tote bag.

Shaking the entire ride, she stares at her phone, willing it to ring.

But it doesn't, so she grabs her luggage out of the trunk and heads into the lobby and towards the front desk to book a room, too tired to do anything but accept anything but the rate they want to give her.

It was exhilarating. Not perfect—Will's going to have a fight in front of him, especially for directing his temper at a sweet blonde all-American sort of girl (and doesn't the media love to sanctify those?), but finally. _Finally. _If only she knew what any of it _meant._

In the middle of dropping her luggage to the floor and wrenching her wallet out of her purse, she's distracted by a commotion from the front doors.

"Mac! _MacKenzie! _Hey—"

Frantically, she thinks. He's shouting her name frantically.

"Will?" she asks, nowhere near as loudly.

Out of breath, he stops a foot in front of her, mouth opening and closing around jumbled thoughts. "Hi."

"Hi," she repeats back to him, too stunned to say anything else.

He looks like he doesn't know what to say, as paralyzed by their meeting as she is. Carefully licking his lips, he slowly reaches a hand to her face, jerking it back when someone else comes crashing through the hotel doors—Don, shoving though the doormen and barely avoiding being run over by a bellhop, face reddened from temper.

"Will—what the ever-loving fuck are you doing, jumping out of the car in the middle of the block—" he shouts, before noticing her. "MacKenzie McHale."

"Hi, Don," she quietly says, inclining her head toward him in greeting.

He stops short, looking back and forth between the two of them. "I'm confused."

"Will's little show back there may have been my fault," she explains, letting the straps on her purse fall down her arm and dropping it to the floor as well.

Don's eyebrows knit together. "Wait—"

"It's entirely her fault," Will says nonchalantly, waving Don off. "But that's besides the point."

"Will, get back in the car," Don demands, angrily clutching his BlackBerry in front of him.

"No," Will answers dismissively, hardly giving Don a glance and turning back to her. "Not without her. Are you staying here?"

Mac swallows hard, folding her hands together. "Well, I was going to get a room, but haven't yet—"

"I have a suite at the Waldorf, you can come with us," Will immediately says.

"No, she can't," Don interrupts, and the ire on Will's face flashes. "She doesn't work for ACN, and you have to start working on cleaning this up, Will, we have start issuing apologies—"

"I'm not apologizing," he says calmly, and Mac begins to suspect that his calm is entirely for her benefit.

Don's eyebrows lift comically high. "Excuse me?"

But Will ignores him, focusing solely on her. "What do I do now?"

"What do you mean?"

"How do I win this?" he asks, swaying closer to her. Almost imperceptibly, his voice is shaking.

Biting her lip, she forces herself to lift her gaze from his collar to his face. "Well… you need to apologize to Jenny."

"Sorority girl?"

She sighs, the hotel lobby disappearing from around them.

"Yeah, you say that and all people hear is a douchebag baby boomer condescending to a young woman. Her name is Jenny," she tells him forcefully, mind sorting the pieces into place. "And then you do a show, building off what you said. We make it less hostile, eighty-six your nostalgia bullshit. Change the message a little, also talk about what your era of good feelings wasn't—"

Don refuses to be ignored, wedging himself between them. "I'm your EP, Will, in case you've forgotten—"

"Yeah, I don't care."

_How many EPs have you had? _she wonders, but keeps to herself. Don, she knows, was only hired as his senior producer in January. _What is happening right now? _The evening's events are running together into a heady whirlwind, and Mac can no longer tell which way is up, just that Will has unconsciously reached for her hand and is holding it now, bracing his shoulders back to shield her from Don—

Who huffs, muttering as if to an audience before rolling his eyes and backing away. "I quit."

"I still don't care," Will calls, and they both watch Don walk out the door before looking at each other for a long moment, just breathing. "You could have me win this?" he asks, the bravado gone.

Nodding, she takes a step closer to him. "Yeah. If you're willing to let me run the show the way I want to. No pulling punches, Will, no more ratings gimmicks, we do the news the way it's supposed to be done—"

Then it's his turn to nod. "Do you want to come back to _News Night?"_

She may never get her whistleblower piece on the military industrial complex, but she's starting figure that it wasn't going to fill the particularly Will-shaped hole on her heart anyway.

"You need me, don't you?" she asks, laughing nervously. "Your EP just quit."

"Yeah. I do," he answers, voice low, looking her right in the eyes. She'd forgotten—nearly, but not quite—exactly how blue his are. "I need you."

"I need you too."

He squeezes her fingers before letting go of her hand, stooping down to sling her luggage over his shoulder and hand her purse.

"Okay."

And then holds out his hand again, watching her purposefully until she takes it, laces their fingers together, and leads them out onto the street to hail another cab.

It's time to go home.

* * *

**Thanks for reading! **


	3. You're Coming Back For Me

**A/N: **So by "a short epilogue" I clearly meant "I cannot be concise to save my life, so here have a third part." So, um, here, have a third part. In celebration of the new footage. Thanks to everyone who commented on the last part!

* * *

**PART III: YOU'RE COMING BACK FOR ME**

* * *

First on the agenda is room service. MacKenzie is far too thin, and among the many problems between the two of them, feeding her is the easiest and simplest to solve. She protests, but he still picks up the phone on the end table next to the couch and orders half the menu, picking and choosing appetizers and entrees and desserts that he remembers she likes.

Regardless, he tells himself, he didn't eat dinner before the eight o'clock panel and now there is no way in hell he is showing his face in the general vicinity of a camera until checkout tomorrow morning, and from what Mac's told him she went straight from the airport to Northwestern so she needs to eat too, no matter if she's hungry or not.

"You need to call Charlie," she tells him when he hangs up, eyes on the screen of her Blackberry. "You're trending on Twitter, and Don just quit."

Will would rather not. And besides, he's already found a replacement EP.

"He won't be mad," Mac says softly. "He'll like what you said. But you need to call him, and probably your agent. I'll wait."

Frowning, he looks at her, scrutinizes her. "I'm not worried he'll be mad."

Then the softness is gone, replaced by a sarcastically arched brow. "You need to call Charlie," she orders.

_Rationally_, he recognizes that, sighing at his BlackBerry. On the other hand, he doesn't look forward to Charlie's smugness, or having to share a MacKenzie who very much looks like she's ready to collapse into bed and stay there for a very long time.

But then again, he doubts that she'll relax until he makes the phone calls.

"Fine."

His acquiescence comes with sinking down into the couch cushions, hoping that she'll follow. Watching him carefully, she edges closer before finally unlacing her fingers and shrugging out of her camel-colored blazer, throwing it over the back of the couch, and settling down next to him. When he makes a show of dialing Charlie's number, she smiles.

It's almost enough to wipe the dread of facing Charlie away.

Almost.

Charlie picks up before the second ring gets a chance to sound. "William Duncan McAvoy. What in the hell have you gone and done now?"

"Yeah, about that—"

What the fuck does he even say? _By the way, I'm still in love with MacKenzie and I've been trying to sort my head out since she almost died last fall, and we've been talking and crossing weird lines and she kind of produced my little outburst. Sorry for the headache? _Not that he needs to _protect _Mac from Charlie of all people, but this is happening all so fast, and he hasn't spoken to Mac in a month, and he has no idea how she is outside of a CNN IA report. But she's _here_, within arm's reach. Not fragile, no. Never fragile, but he still wants to spare her any pain that he can.

"Don's gone and quit, I've heard. Not that I'm entirely unused to you driving away your EPs, but this one was done pretty spectacularly—"

Mac presses her fingertips to her lips, quieting a laugh.

Will cringes. "About that—"

"No, it's probably time he found a better fit," Charlie rambles genially, cutting him off. "I'm meeting with him and Elliot tomorrow for lunch, I think it's quite possible that it's time that you have eight o'clock to yourself again. We'll need to start putting out feelers for a new EP for you. I don't think we want someone in-house this time."

"I agree." Now or never, he figures. "Mac is here."

Charlie takes that as encouragement. "Yes, I heard she was back in the country—"

"He's called me seven times since I got back," Mac explains lowly, looking down at her hands in her lap.

He cuts Charlie off there. "No, I mean Mac is in my hotel room, sitting a foot away from me."

"That… changes my game a little bit," he replies after moment. Gritting his teeth, Will waits for the inquisition to begin. "How is she?"

With a nervous expression, Mac reaches for the phone, but he moves it out of her reach.

"I'll put her on speaker," he says, ignoring how Mac rolls her eyes.

"Hi, Charlie," she says sheepishly once he sets the phone down on his thigh.

"I'm confused," Charlie says, forthright in his backhanded demand for an explanation. Not that Will expected any less.

"You haven't—_Will,_" she chastises him, voice turning shrill with alarm when she pieces together that Charlie hasn't the faintest idea that they've been speaking. Shoving his shoulder, she looks down at his phone."Will and I have been back in touch since I got hurt back in September. Just emails, and the like. I was—it's a complicated story, but I was in the audience today and there were signs held up and really, I am only accountable for the words 'it's not, but it can be' and then he had to go and—"

Nervous, she rambles, hands flinging out in front of her.

"Got it," Charlie says genially. And then, abruptly, "MacKenzie, you looking for a job?"

Mouth hanging open, she looks from the phone to him and back. "No," she denies almost immediately, but then squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head, reconsidering. "I mean, well, yes, but—"

Her hands fly up to her face, nearly hitting him in the process. Startled, he grabs the hand that almost struck his nose and wraps his fingers around it, gently forcing it back down into her lap.

"Do you wanna be Will's new EP?"

Will arches a brow at that.

"I'm right here, you know," he reminds him.

Charlie snorts. "William, you don't have contractual approval of your EP, I can hire whomever I find to be the most apt at handling you like a man. Which is, and always will be, MacKenzie McHale. What do you say, dear?"

Wait.

"I don't have contractual—"

"Stop ruining the moment," Charlie rebuts sharply.

Mac emits a watery laugh, looking at him with a manic expression of disbelief. "Will, you offered me the job forty minutes ago."

"It's the principle—" He scrambles, before shutting himself down. "Okay, okay. Mac, please say yes so this can be settled before dinner?"

He gives her a smile that he hopes is encouraging. Or at the least, not off-putting.

She stares at him for a moment with an almost inscrutable expression, before smiling in a way that crinkles the corners of her eyes. "Charlie, have your people call my agent and we'll have ourselves a deal. I'm also going to have to bring some of my own people with me. A senior producer, a few desk producers, an H&A producer… and a woman who could be on-air talent."

"Yes. Good," Charlie says in a way that connotes finality. And then, with a tone of barely-masked mischievousness, "I'll leave you two kids alone."

And with that, he hangs up with an audible _click _that resounds loudly between the two of them. Will's BlackBerry lights up, showing Charlie's contact info one last brief time, before flickering to the lock screen.

"Oh god," he says, tossing his phone onto the coffee table before sitting back fully into the over-stuffed couch, scrubbing his hands over his face.

No pressure on the traumatized woman, or anything.

"I'm sure he didn't mean it like that," Mac hedges, giggling nervously.

He did. The past three years haven't been an exercise in subtlety for Charlie, especially once he starts into the decanter of bourbon that sits ubiquitously at attention on top of his in-office liquor cabinet. Will's just happy that he stopped short at asking about grandchildren, or something equally ridiculous.

After all, if _he _was able to easily access Mac's PTSD diagnosis, there is no way that Charlie doesn't know about it. There's something there, but Will is too distracted by MacKenzie being right here, in front of him, to interrogate that line of questioning any further.

"No, he definitely meant it like that," he says, because there's no way to make this any less awkward. "There's a reason I didn't tell him that we've been emailing."

"Well… alright then," she replies softly, voice trailing off, eyes scanning the pristinely decorated hotel suite. Something flickers in her eyes—a decision, probably, setting a new course—and she pastes on a smile. "Now that that's settled, when would you like me to start?"

She can't possibly…

"Oh, we don't… have to do that now." Anxiously, he rubs his palms over the thighs of his pants, looking her over from the black blouse to the charcoal skirt and the warmly familiar sky-high shoes. MacKenzie is dressed the part, but he can't get the image of her in his tattered flannel shirt, her hair piled on top of her head, the skin under her eyes stamped with exhaustion, out of his head. "The food should be here soon—you're exhausted."

"Everyone's exhausted," she says, gingerly straightening her spine. Her cheeks flush, eyes watering.

"Not everyone has PTSD," he replies as matter-of-factly as possible.

"I don't need to be coddled," she snaps, although the harshness of her tone is tempered by the tears spilling down her cheeks.

Wordlessly, he reaches for the box of tissues on the end table next to him, and passes one to her.

"I'm not coddling you. You _are _exhausted, and I know that no one on your team can do a damn thing to make you rest and you'll just keep pushing yourself out of some—" He sighs, briefly looking at the ceiling before turning back to her. "That part's not important. If I know Charlie, he's already booked an extra night on the ACN account. You're going to eat, and then do whatever the fuck you want that doesn't involve moving and sleep in late tomorrow."

"I appear to have lost the ability to sleep for more than a few hours at a time," she says quietly, folding a tissue in half, and then half again, before blotting at the mascara smudged around her eyes.

"Breakfast in bed, then," he answers, trying to be gentle without making her think that he sees her as weak, or worse yet, incapable. "Unless you've lost the ability to lay in bed and eat French toast, too."

MacKenzie laughs, her hands falling to rest in her lap. She looks at them for a long moment, collecting herself, before looking back at him. "No, I think that I can still do."

* * *

The food arrives shortly after that. It's chicken something and beef something and two kinds of pasta dishes and parmesan fries with garlic aioli and a dainty margherita pizza that she winds up eating in its entirety, before convincing herself that her stomach can handle cream sauce and whatever the Waldorf kitchen has drenched the asparagus in.

It's nice. A little surreal, but nice, and she eats more than she has in half a year around easy conversation. At some point, her mind stops telling her that it shouldn't be easy to be like this with Will, and she relaxes.

"I've had a problem with forgetting to eat," she says while examining a French fry, five or so minutes after Will has pulled her knees to rest over his lap.

"You've always done that, though. When you've been off on something."

Mac snorts, eating the fry and collapsing down onto the couch cushions, pillowing her head on a monstrous velveteen pillow.

"Not for days at a time," she muses dryly, and sighs, forcing her tone to be light. "I kind of just… stop trying to take care of myself. Sleep. Shower. Eat. And now, being back over here is… I don't know how to process it. The beds are too soft. The lights are too bright. The showers have water pressure. No one uses military time."

The last part she intends as a joke, but neither of them laugh.

Will looks at her, his expression entirely too soft. She's having a hard time when she doesn't have to something to fight against. But she doesn't want to fight Will.

"I'm sorry I didn't reply to your emails," she says, when it becomes apparent that they won't recover the light-heartedness of their earlier dinner conversation. Having no idea where they stand, she plunges forward. If Will kicks her out (although she supposes that he won't) it's not like she has much left to lose. "I read them, I was just… really fucking angry. And a whole lot of other things, not necessarily at you."

She settles another one of the decorative pillows over her middle, fingers tracing and playing with the little braided tassels at the corners. One of Will's hands cups her knee, his thumb tracing circles into her skin, fingers absently inching to where her skirt has crept up. She wonders if he can notice how every hair on her body is standing up, if he cares that she hasn't shaved in days.

"I kind of have to forgive you," he says, staring down at her legs in her lap, tripping the fingers on his other hand up and down her shins.

"Why?" she whispers.

Everything—from the moment she stepped off the plane and into O'Hare International—feels too good to be true, like she's going to wake up any moment, back in the hot morphine haze she was in in Landstuhl. That this is some drugged farce her mind has constructed to numb the pain as everything she has left in her life goes up in flames.

But no, she thinks. The burning she felt from the morphine didn't feel like this. She doesn't feel like her nerves are kindling for the conflagration. She's warm, pleasantly so.

Will's hands encircle her ankles, fingers brushing over fine bones before he pauses, massaging her calves. "I didn't read your emails until I'd heard that you were in critical condition in Islamabad," he explains with a tone of voice that she knows is only the act of irreverence.

Slowly, she pushes herself up to brace her weight back on the heels of her hands. "I—you read—why didn't you say anything?"

"I don't know." He shrugs, before laughing at himself with an air of self-deprecation. "I mean, I do know. But you were saying that you loved me and were begging for forgiveness and I didn't know what I—"

"Not loved. I do love you," she corrects, trying to chase any trace of desperation from her voice. But Will wasn't wrong—she's exhausted, mentally and physically, and most of all emotionally. "And I'm sorry, I'll be sorry for how stupid I was for the rest of my life, if only because now I have an unstable abdomen and a head full of crazy, but not if only, because—"

His head snaps up.

"What I mean is I didn't know how to reply to you, then," he says, cutting her off. Gently, but firmly. "I do now."

The pillow falls from her lap to the floor.

"Oh."

She still has little to no idea how to comprehend that Will has read _all _of her emails.

"I need you, remember?" he says, reminding her of their exchange in the lobby of the Marriot, before he swept her into a taxi and dropped his arm over her shoulder. It's hard to look past the impulse to read more into what he's saying, and Mac tries to break the habit she's begun during their months of correspondence. The expression on Will's face is painfully earnest, open and persuasive.

—He wants her to believe him because he's telling the truth.

Because he doesn't want her to suffer.

_"Oh." _ She sits up fully. And then, scowling at him, "Why didn't you tell me, I would have come home months ago—"

"How was I supposed to know you wanted to come home?" he asks, leaning closer to her. Somehow her hands find placement on his chest, and they slide into old choreography without thinking, his hands moving from her calves, over her knees and up her thighs to grasp her waist.

"You're an idiot," she chokes out, desperately ignoring the tears welling in her eyes, not wanting to cry again today.

Is Will really this insecure? Then again, does she really have PTSD? This crying thing, it has to stop at some point, right? The therapist at Bethesda said it will, once she starts responding to the medication and her body no longer thinks that it's under attack and every stimuli will, somehow, cease to be entirely overwhelming.

"Yeah, well, you're the one in love with an idiot," he murmurs.

Snorting, she rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to stammer a retort, but her words—_Thank you, that is entirely reassuring, you were saying?_—are halted by Will slanting his mouth onto hers. Exhaling unevenly through her nose, she climbs even further into his lap; his hands at her waist roaming up and down her back before one settles at the nape of her neck and the other on her hip. He kisses her softly, easily, pulling back before it has the chance to escalate into anything else at all.

He just _looks _at her for a long moment, the hand cupping the base of her skull moving to frame her cheek, his thumb stroking her cheekbone.

"I love you. I think we should try this again—"

"Do you mean kissing, or—"

"MacKenzie," he sighs.

Biting her lip, she smooths her palms up and down the slope of his shoulders. "We were a show that flopped."

His smile becomes one of decided exasperation.

"Sometimes revivals turn out better than the first production," he counters forcefully. "Didn't you hear—I love you. I never stopped loving you. I think we're better off together than apart. I want you to come back to New York with me and stay in my place or something until your apartment is sorted out, and this all probably sounds overly-rational and very sudden, but—"

"Yes."

_Rational is good_, she wants to say. _Rational is appreciated, when everything feels like it's out of my control. I like rational. _Will keeps rambling on, though, finding new and interesting places to move his hands, like over the back of her thighs where her pencil skirt has ridden up indecently high.

"—I've been freaking out since we had the fight a month ago and I've been freaking out since you got hurt and I read all of your emails in a wild blur of coffee and cigarettes and I've come to the conclusion that recently I've been freaking out about that more than you with Brian and I kind of haven't been to see Abe in a… long time, but I think that's significant."

Leaning up onto a knee, she tries to get him to catch her eyes again, but he's not interested in contact, focusing solely on getting all of the words out before he loses his nerve. "Will, honey—"

"I'm trying to say that I forgive you. Not that you… explicitly need my forgiveness. I've done some things in the interim to make things worse and I—"

Breathing raggedly, MacKenzie turns her nails into the fabric at his shoulders and, angling her head, brings their mouths back together.

She doesn't quite know what to think. She knows how she feels, though, shivering when Will untucks her shirt from her skirt and slides his hands over her lower back, not daring to move them any lower. Faintly, she remembers Charlie's insinuations about what _activities _they would be doing tonight, and almost laughs. But then his tongue traces her lower lip and, moaning, opens her mouth to him.

* * *

Mindlessly, he complies when Mac pushes him back onto the couch cushions and moves to lie on top of him, her forearms bracketing his head and her knees pressing into his hips. It's easy to lose track of what he's doing with her breasts pushed against his chest, her hips moving against his, her hair falling in curtains around their faces. Without thinking about it, his fingers unclasp her bra, hands skirting around to her sides to slide under the loosened garment, his thumbs getting between them to circle her nipples. Her fingers clench into his hair, and he decides that he'll worry about what she's doing to his cowlick later.

He should be doing something else. Issuing a statement, or apologizing to Don and Elliot, or anything, really. But god,_ this_ seems so much more important—the little noises the Mac is making, the way the muscles in her thighs tighten almost imperceptibly against his hips, the slide of her tongue against his. Far more important.

Will thinks he'd be perfectly content to stay like this forever, necking with MacKenzie on the couch in a Waldorf Suite.

So when Mac pushes herself off him and stands, absently re-arranging her skirt, he stares up at her in confusion. Until she bites her lip over a smile, holding her hand out to him.

"Come here," she says, angling her body towards the bedroom.

"Um…"

A nervous expression takes hold of her features; her fingers twitch, and she retracts her hand to pull her skirt down. "Unless you don't want to—"

"Definitely not complaining," he quickly recovers, sitting up. And then remembers something crucial. "Wait, what about—are you on something? Or do we need—?"

"Fuck," she mutters, eyes going wide. And then, with a wry twist to the corners of her (swollen, he notes) lips, "Don't you have a condom in your wallet, or whatever it is that men do to be prepared in the event of even the slightest chance of sex?"

Snorting, he pushes himself up off the couch, reaching to wrap his arms around her waist and pull her back against him. "Okay, first of all, the friction from being stored in a wallet causes small tears in the latex, and second of all, we can work around this."

"With what, plastic wrap?" she quips, tilting her head up to nip at his mouth.

"You're—no. I mean, we can do… other things," he manages to get out, moving his hands to her ass. Other things, he thinks, remembering what it was like to have Mac's thighs wrapped around his head. Other things are good too. Then he frowns. "You went off the pill? The last time you did that you were spending two days a month curled up in a ball in bed."

(He'd never been so keenly appreciative of ladies until the moment he realized that period cramps can make a woman throw up, but whichever pill Mac was on had been in her system for so long that it was making her dizzy and fucking with her emotions and giving her daily headaches and just generally making her miserable.)

"You can't really stay on the pill when you're traipsing through the desert… although all things considered some women thought of it as contents insurance. And I got used to it." Scrunching her nose up a bit, she laughs, but diverts her eyes to somewhere around the first button on his shirt before centering herself again—he regrets bringing it up. "And no, we're calling the concierge desk."

Oh Jesus, he can already see the _In Touch _cover. His prudish Republican image is all he has left going for him.

"I'm already a PR disaster today, we really don't need to tack on a story about—"

"Yeah, over a million views on YouTube at last count. _I'll _call the concierge desk," Mac replies, already slipping out of his grasp in hunt for the room's phone.

His mind disengages for a moment. "Or we could take the risk. I mean, would it really be so bad if we had a baby—_oh my god._ What just came out of my mouth? Words. Just words. I didn't say that."

The look on Mac's face is a stunned cross of panic and amusement, before she makes a display of picking the phone up out of the cradle, dialing, and putting it to her ear.

Twenty minutes later a discreet bellhop is at the door with a twelve-count box of lubricated Magnums, and Mac hands him a stack of hundred dollar bills that he had fished out of his wallet the moment the concierge asked her for the name of the person to whom the suite belonged and what brand she wanted. He really, really hopes that five hundred dollars is enough to buy the twentysomething's silence.

It hits him, then.

MacKenzie is right here, in front of him, after a month of uncertainty and anxiety and at many points outright panic. MacKenzie is here, and they're on their way to bed, picking up where they left off, except not at all because three years has passed and she's been stabbed and gassed and shot at and two hours ago he completely upended his life on a stage at Northwestern.

"Well?" she asks, holding out her hand again, looking just as nervous as he feels.

For such a small amount of floor space to cover, their trek to the bedroom is a long one. Her skirt is discarded, and then his shirt. His belt clatters to the floor shortly thereafter, while he's busy trying not to trip getting out of his shoes and socks. Next is her blouse and her already-unhooked bra, and she's left standing in a lace-trimmed black camisole that he's loathe to deprive her of until she's ready, instead letting her pull his tee shirt up over his head. They get onto the bed next—the proper order of things, Will thinks, pulling her lace briefs down her thighs as she unbuttons the fly of his trousers. When he rolls onto his side to push them off, Mac sits up and strips off camisole, throwing it to the floor and falling back to lay against the great wall of pillows propped up against the headboard.

"It's not pretty," she says quietly a moment later, catching him staring at the six-inch scar curving up the left side of her abdomen.

"At least you have a better story than falling off a tractor," he quips as lightly as possible, referencing a patch of pearly scar tissue the size of softball on his right thigh.

Her response is an anxious giggle.

Rolling back onto his stomach, he lies between her legs, moving down until the stab wound scar is at eye level. Five feet of small intestine, he remembers from her early emails after it happened. But no threat of Short Bowel Syndrome.

The scar tissue is still very red, and raised under his fingers as he traces it after looking up at her face, asking tacitly for permission. Mac shivers, but her shivers turn to trembles which quickly escalate to her shaking herself out of her skin. He moves his hands to cup her hips and bends down to press a soft kiss to the scar.

"No one ever has to see it," he says lowly, resting his chin on top of her thigh. "Or you could use it to intimidate the staff, become the stuff of legend."

"If it had been a bullet I could have gotten it bronzed," she retorts unsteadily. "I threatened to get Jim's bullet bronzed."

Will frowns.

"You know, we don't have to—"

"I want to," she says assertively, lifting her head up off the pillow to glare down at him. "I'm sorry, I'm just a little… off-balance. I didn't even mean for you to see me today."

"Were you just going to leave?"

"I didn't really have a plan," she sighs, combing her fingers through his hair. "For anything, really, until we made eye contact. Then I kind of just figured _what the hell_ and here we are. And I have a job. And you. When I landed here a few hours ago I thought I'd be heading back to DC tomorrow morning with no job prospects and no one from my team left."

Slowly, he starts to trace circles into the inside of the thigh his head isn't resting on. "How in the hell did you think I wouldn't see you?"

"Will, there were two thousand people in the audience today," she explains with a hint of a smile, the tremors beginning to ease.

"Yeah, but none of them were as important as you," he answers, moving lower and lifting a leg to rest over his shoulder.

"You—"

He cuts off her reply by licking a stripe up the inside of her thigh.

_"Will," _she gasps.

Inhaling deeply through his nose, he fits his mouth against her folds. Her hips lurch forward, and she moans, sliding a second hand into his hair. He's missed this—all the little twitches and breathy noises, the subtle contract and release of the muscles in her legs and abdomen, the rush of wetness against his mouth, the feeling of her skin heating up under his hands.

MacKenzie's never been particularly shy about expressing what she wants, and in what seems like no time she goes from moaning loudly, grabbing his hair to direct him to moaning loudly and pushing him back from her, panting through an orgasm.

Smiling, she hauls him up her body and plants her mouth onto his.

Somehow in the mix of lips and teeth and tongues, roaming hands and tangling legs, he ends up leaning back against an overstuffed headboard with Mac straddling him, grinding their hips together.

* * *

Smirking, she offers to put the condom on with her mouth, which Will promptly declines. With aftershocks still rippling in her thighs, she lowers herself onto him. Tossing her hair back over her shoulders she sighs, rotating her hips to find an angle that feels good. When she notices how intently Will is watching her, she laughs, leans forward, and kisses him.

"Sorry, I'm a little rusty. I'm _not _entirely sure this is going to be like riding a bike," she jokes breathlessly, testing out knee placement.

"I'm not exactly on top of my game either," he says, kissing along her jaw from her chin to her ear. "We'll figure it out. I remember us being pretty good at this."

"Yeah," she sighs in agreement, rolling her hips up and then back down. "We were."

She doesn't want to interrogate Will's statement. It's a matter of fact that she hasn't been with anyone in years, but she knows Will has dated (for publicity or other reasons, she's not wholly certain) and now is not the moment to be dragging their sexual histories out. But still, his statement drags her thoughts back to earlier—

_I never stopped loving you._

As she finds a rhythm her head falls back. It's slow, and the smooth stretch and burn between her thighs heightens every time she descends, surging when her hips quirk forward, pressing the bundle of nerves into the ridge of his pelvis. The only sounds coming from Will are those of constrained breathing, until, tightening his hold of her waist, he groans and buries his face in her breasts. His legs jerk under her, bending at the knees so he can plant his feet on the mattress.

"You haven't forgotten a goddamn thing," he moans, almost accusatorily, sending a hand down to the apex of her thighs to rub tight circles over her clit.

A jolt of pleasure ripples through her legs before pooling between them. "Maybe we're just naturals," she counters.

_"Fuck, _yeah, we're definitely—" she chokes out, before her brain refuses to find an ending for that train of thought. The hand still at her waist slides up to wrap around under her shoulders, keeping her upright, or at least at the angle that's currently lighting up fireworks behind her eyelids.

"You close?" Will asks, and MacKenzie can feel the muscles in his arm tightening, and realizes faintly that he's mostly responsible for making sure that she doesn't lay herself out back against his legs. "Hon?"

"I'm—yeah," she finally answers, blinking open her eyes.

Will wastes no time getting her there.

He presses down harder, and then pauses, his fingers lingering when she throws herself back, digging her fingernails into his shoulders to keep herself from falling backwards. "I love you," she gasps out, feeling her own body stutter and then tighten almost painfully before release washes over her in waves.

And then she says it again, and again, draping herself over him, waiting for the blood to stop pounding in her ears and fingers and toes.

"I love you too," he murmurs, tracing his hands up and down the sides of her spine before lifting her hair from where it's lacquered to her sweat-slick skin, turning his head to kiss her ear, her cheek. She shivers; it's beginning to feel real. Finally, everything that's happened since September is beginning to feel real, and not like it's going to kill her.

Her pulse still faintly throbbing through her limbs, she tightens herself around him, feels his erection flex within her.

"Are you—?"

"I'm good," she assures him, and then squeals with shocked laughter when he tucks her legs over his hips and pushes her onto her back, her head landing somewhere near the end of the bed. "I could have—"

"You've already done enough," he teases, taking a few testing strokes before his face slackens with pleasure.

God, she loves him.

Feeling herself smile, Mac wraps her arms around his neck and pulls his face down to hers. Moving faster, Will seems beyond anything but the wet slap of their hips meeting, but she traces his bottom lip with her tongue before sucking his into her mouth. It's another minute before his back locks up entirely.

Kissing the corner of her mouth, his muscles slowly loosen until he collapses on top of her, rambling into her neck how much he loves her, what a spectacular woman she is, how much he missed her, how she's never leaving his sight ever again, goddammit.

—She giggles at the last one, and reminds him that the logistics of doing a news broadcast mean that she can see him but he can't see her.

Groaning, he rolls off of her and onto his back.

"Unfair."

"And I'm not certain I can just show up to the newsroom on Monday," she points out, nudging him to get up and deal with the condom before he passes out. Will does, and returns from the en suite bathroom with a brandless pack of baby wipes, handing them to her.

"All things considered, I'm not sure I can just show up to the newsroom on Monday," he mutters, climbing back onto the bed, laying across her legs once she finishes cleaning herself. Absently, he starts to massage her thighs and calves.

Somehow they both wind up under the covers and with an appropriate amount of pillows, curled up together looking at the explosion in his inbox, when a new email from Charlie appears.

**To: mmchale , wdmcavoy  
From: coskinner  
10:28 PM on March 26 2010**

_As promised, MacKenzie, my people have been in contact with your people and I've gotten some browbeaten IT intern to re-instate your old ACN email account. If all goes well, you should be able to start here in three weeks. As for you, William, the 44th floor is ordering a vacation. I fought the good fight, and upon defeat, remembered that you have a lovely lady in your company who is actually in dire need of a vacation. You're both going to St. Lucia, compliments of the Lansings._

_Upon your returns, you may find that things may be shaken up a bit at ACN…_

* * *

**Thanks for reading!**


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